[Barcelona, Spain, February 28, 2017] Huawei received the ‘Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G’ award at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017. This year is the first year that GSMA has chosen to present the award for 5th generation mobile networks (5G) and receiving such an honor helps to showcase Huawei’s contribution to technology evolution.

“This is the first year that GSMA sets an outstanding contribution award for 5G. Huawei is honored to receive this award” said Mr. Xu Wenwei, Executive Director of the Board, Chief Strategy Marketing Officer, “The next few years will see continuous LTE development and 5G innovations. So, we need to do the preparation in all aspects, including network deployment and industry collaboration. During the 4.5G to 5G, Huawei will keep focusing on helping our customers to improve user experience, to step into all cloud era, to enable innovative services for vertical industries, and finally to build 5G with more vitality and longer lifecycle.”

68 4.5G networks were commercially deployed worldwide in 2016 and the number of networks deployed in 2017 is expected to reach 120.

Network evolution should begin with the evolution of network architecture. In 2016, Huawei launched its CloudRAN Solution, which is a technology that applies a cloudified architecture to the Radio Access Network (RAN) and can create a 4.5G and 5G oriented architecture integrating multiple radio access technologies (RATs), frequency bands, and layers. And it is also a foundation for E2E network slicing, providing operators with a way to realize the new business model of deploying diversified new services in one network. As an anchor for joining 4.5G and 5G, CloudRAN helps maximize network collaboration efficiency and helps operators produce business success.

Huawei is still insisting on continued investment in technical innovation in order to meet the challenge of the anticipated accelerated increase of future MBB network traffic. Huawei and the world’s leading operators engage in large-scale 5G NR field tests and 5G high and low frequency hybrid field tests. The results show that continuous coverage and super ultra-large capacity can be satisfied simultaneously, and a single-user peak of 25Gbps can be achieved.

In addition, Huawei and Deutsche Telekom have performed the millimeter-wave high-frequency test procedure and achieved a peak rate of 70 Gbps – an industry first. Huawei’s CloudAIR solution can promote the usage of the air interface resource and realize quick deployment of 5G NR and thus solve the problem about long-term coexistence with pre-existing RATs.

Meanwhile, by adopting 5G technology on 4G networks well in advance, Huawei and operators have jointly taken the lead in finishing the deployment of Massive MIMO in 4G live networks, providing good user experience and huge promotion of network capability.

In order to construct a new business model with industry, Huawei and vertical industry partners jointly succeeded in the incubation of many NB-IoT commercial use cases. Furthermore, Huawei announced X Labs in 2016, a new research platform that will bring together operators, technology providers, and vertical industry partners to jointly explore future use cases for mobile applications, and drive innovation in business and technology.

Huawei’s “4.5G Evolution to 5G” solution, which provides high-quality coverage, ultra-large capacity and flexible network architecture, can help operators to keep ahead on the road to 5G and help to make 5G a reality.

Mobile World Congress 2017 is being held in Barcelona, Spain from February 27 to March 2 this year. The Huawei exhibition area is in area 1J50 in Hall 1, area 3I30 in Hall 3, and the Innovative City exhibition area in Hall 4 in Fira Gran Via. For more details, see: http://www.huawei.com/cn/events/mwc/2017/